Ethnic cleansing by federal computers and apparatchiks

Your ethnic heritage no longer exists. The same with my Italian heritage. They were eliminated by our all-knowing,
all-powerful, all-loving federal government.

As my physician explained recently, the
feds have imposed a clunky, expensive and time-consuming new computer system on
physicians. The system asks for the
ethnicity of patients in addition to the race of patients. But the system
reduces the hundreds of ethic groups in the United States to two choices:
“Hispanic” and “Non-Hispanic.”

If computers had existed in the Third Reich, “Aryan” and “Jewish” might have been
the two choices.

This lowly,
dimwitted and powerless serf doesn’t understand why our central government
needs to track the race and ethnicity of patients, but, thankfully, it hasn’t
adopted the concentration camp slogan, Arbeit
macht frei, or “Work will set you free.” On the other hand, it has
adopted the slogan, “Why work when stuff is free?”

In any event, with just a few lines of
computer code, some apparatchik in the intestines of the federal bureaucracy
was able to eliminate my heritage and the heritages of hundreds of millions of
other Americans.

Ironically, the catch-all label of
“Hispanic” has eliminated the heritages of scores of other widely diverse
ethnic groups and nationalities, including, for example, Spaniards, Portuguese,
Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Panamanians, and Mexicans.

Even the word “Mexican” hides the fact
that there are many different indigenous peoples in Mexico. The
Mexican government has magically eliminated this rich diversity with its own
racial/ethnic classification system, which uses these five catch-all labels: Indígena pura, Indígena mezclada con blanca,
Blanca, Extranjeros sin distinción de razas, Cualquiera otra o que se ignora la
raza.

Of all the intellectual
tripe served on K-12 and college campuses, the most disgusting and sophomoric
is the tripe about diversity. Under the guise of “celebrating diversity,” the
government handmaidens who run universities have reduced the extensive
diversity of the nation to five classifications: Non-Hispanic White, Hispanic,
Black, Asian, and Native American. Of these, all but non-Hispanic whites are
considered minorities.

I stand corrected.
Universities are quietly ending the practice of classifying Asians as
minorities for purposes of affirmative action. Although Asians are only 4.4%
of the population, or about a fourth of the number of Hispanics, they don’t
deserve the victim status of “minority” because they are too successful and are
disproportionately represented in the most difficult and lucrative majors.

This
is an interesting development in view of the Supreme Court agreeing to rule,
once again, on the constitutionality of affirmative action.

When retired Supreme
Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
wrote the last decision on affirmative action, she embraced the poppycock that
diversity enriches the educational experience.

Apparently, she believed
that without affirmative action, college campuses would be lily white, that the
white race is not ethnically diverse or enriching, that Americans of color
would not attend college, and that foreign students would stop attending
American universities in droves. She also fell into the most malodorous
academic septic tank on campus, the one where racial and ethnic diversity is
more important than ideological diversity.

This
mindset is particularly odoriferous, because it is the result of universities
intentionally indoctrinating students in the ideology of collectivist statism.
Regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, students tend to
think alike about political and moral philosophy, especially about poverty,
social justice and fairness. Evidence of individualism and independent
thinking is as rare on college campuses as a major in White Male Studies.

Case in point: My son used to date a
fellow student who was born in Nepal.
A charming, attractive and smart young woman, she is majoring in pre-med.
Granted, it was interesting to speak with her about Nepalese culture--about
religious beliefs, social customs, cuisine, and feelings about China. Of
course, such information could have been found in a couple of minutes on the
Internet.

However, in the course of one
conversation, she claimed that poverty causes obesity, a canard that is taught
across academia. In response, I asked her if Nepal was a poor country. She said
yes--that it is very poor. (My son was smirking, because he knew what was
coming next.) I then said that the Nepalese people must therefore be obese.
She responded, “Oh no, they’re skinny.”

That’s how
powerful the group-think is on campus. It overrides the personal experience of
students, whatever their race or ethnicity. What’s the point of racial and
ethnic diversity if everyone thinks alike?

But my opinion doesn’t count. I’ve been
eliminated and no longer exist.

_____________

Mencken’s Ghost is the nom de plume of a
nonexistent Arizonan who can be reached at ccan2@aol.com.